有名的英语演讲稿

奥巴马纪念曼德拉

有名的英语演讲稿

THE PRESIDENT: At his trial in 1964, Nelson Mandela closed his statement from the dock saying, "I have fought against white domination, and I have fought against black domination. I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons live together in harmony and with equal opportunities. It is an ideal which I hope to live for and to achieve. But if needs be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die."

总统：纳尔逊曼德拉（Nelson Mandela）在1964年接受审判时在被告席上结束他的陈述时说：“我曾为反对白人统治而斗争，也曾为反对黑人统治而斗争。我一直珍藏着一个民主、自由的社会的理想，让所有人都生活在一个和谐共处、机会均等的社会中。我希望为这个理想而生并将其付诸实现。但是，如果需要，我也愿为这样一个理想献出生命。”

And Nelson Mandela lived for that ideal, and he made it real. He achieved more than could be expected of any man. Today, he has gone home. And we have lost one of the most influential, courageous, and profoundly good human beings that any of us will share time with on this Earth. He no longer belongs to us -- he belongs to the ages.

纳尔逊曼德拉为这个理想而生，并将其变成现实。他的成就超出了我们能够寄望于任何一个人去取得的。今天，他安息了。而我们失去了一位我们任何一个人能在这个地球上与之共渡时光的人中最有影响力、最有勇气、最无比善良的一位。他不再属于我们——他属于千秋万世。

Through his fierce dignity and unbending will to sacrifice his own freedom for the freedom of others, Madiba transformed South Africa -- and moved all of us. His journey from a prisoner to a President embodied the promise that human beings -- and countries -- can change for the better. His commitment to transfer power and reconcile with those who jailed him set an example that all humanity should aspire to, whether in the lives of nations or our own personal lives. And the fact that he did it all with grace and good humor, and an ability to acknowledge his own imperfections, only makes the man that much more remarkable. As he once said, "I am not a saint, unless you think of a saint as a sinner who keeps on trying."

曼德拉以其强烈的尊严和为了他人的自由不惜牺牲自己的自由的不折的意志，改变了南非的面貌，并感动了我们所有人。他从一名囚徒变成一位总统的历程体现了全人类——以及各个国家——都能变得更美好的希望。他移交权力并同那些关押他的人和解的承诺树立了一个全人类都应当追求的典范，不论是在国家生活中，还是在我们的个人生活中。而他在做到这一切时还能保持风度和幽默，以及承认自己的不足的能力，这使他更加卓尔不群。他曾说过：“我不是一个圣人，除非你们认为圣人是一个不断努力的罪人。”

I am one of the countless millions who drew inspiration from Nelson Mandela's life. My very first political action, the first thing I ever did that involved an issue or a policy or politics, was a protest against apartheid. I studied his words and his writings. The day that he was released from prison gave me a sense of what human beings can do when they're guided by their hopes and not by their fears. And like so many around the globe, I cannot fully imagine my own life without the example that Nelson Mandela set, and so long as I live I will do what I can to learn from him.

我是从曼德拉的一生得到启迪的千百万人之一。我从事的第一次政治活动，第一次同任何议题、政策或者政治有关的活动，是一次反对种族隔离的抗-议。我常常学习他的言论和文章。他走出监狱的那一天使我意识到，人类在奔向希望而没有恐惧的时候是何等的大有作为。我和世界各地许多人一样，无法想象如果没有曼德拉树立的榜样，我自己的一生会是什么样子。在我有生之年，我将竭尽所能向他学习。

To Graa Machel and his family, Michelle and I extend our deepest sympathy and gratitude for

sharing this extraordinary man with us. His life's work meant long days away from those who loved him the most. And I only hope that the time spent with him these last few weeks brought peace and comfort to his family.

米歇尔和我谨向格拉萨马歇尔和曼德拉的家人致以最深沉的慰唁，并感谢他们与我们分享这位不平凡的人。他的毕生努力意味着长年累月远离最爱他的人们。我真切地希望与他共同度过的最后这几个星期为他的家人带来了平静与安慰。

To the people of South Africa, we draw strength from the example of renewal, and reconciliation, and resilience that you made real. A free South Africa at peace with itself -- that's an example to the world, and that's Madiba's legacy to the nation he loved.

对南非人民，我们要说，你们通过复生、和解与坚毅树立的榜样给了我们力量。一个自由、和平的南非——这是世界的榜样，这是“马迪巴”为他所热爱的.国家留下的遗产。

We will not likely see the likes of Nelson Mandela again. So it falls to us as best we can to forward the example that he set: to make decisions guided not by hate, but by love; to never discount the difference that one person can make; to strive for a future that is worthy of his sacrifice.

我们可能难以再见到像纳尔逊曼德拉这样的伟人。因此，我们的责任是尽我们所能把他树立的榜样传承下去：基于爱——而不是恨——来作决定；永远不要低估一个人所能带来的变化；努力建设一个无愧于他的牺牲的未来。

For now, let us pause and give thanks for the fact that Nelson Mandela lived -- a man who took history in his hands, and bent the arc of the moral universe toward justice. May God Bless his memory and keep him in peace.

现在，让我们停下来，为纳尔逊曼德拉曾经活着而表达我们的感激之情——他用双手握住历史，把道德宇宙的长虹折向正义。愿上帝保佑他的记忆，使他安息。

祖玛纪念曼德拉

My Fellow South Africans,

亲爱的南非同胞们：

Our beloved Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela, the founding President of our democratic nation has departed.

我们敬爱的纳尔逊-罗利赫拉赫拉-曼德拉，这个民主国家的国父，已经去世了。

He passed on peacefully in the company of his family around 20h50 on the 5th of December 2015. 2015年12月5号20点50分（当地时间），曼德拉在家人的陪伴下安详地离世了。 He is now resting. He is now at peace.

他现在离我们而去，与世长辞。

Our nation has lost its greatest son. Our people have lost a father.

我们的国家失去了它最伟大的儿子，我们的人民失去了自己的父亲。

Although we knew that this day would come, nothing can diminish our sense of a profound and enduring loss.

尽管知道这一天终将到来，我们仍感到这是一个巨大在而无法弥补的损失。

His tireless struggle for freedom earned him the respect of the world.

他锲而不舍地为自由而奋斗，赢得了世界的尊重。

His humility, his compassion, and his humanity earned him their love. Our thoughts and prayers are with the Mandela family. To them we owe a debt of gratitude.

谦逊、慈悲和人文关怀为他赢得了无尽的爱。我们和曼德拉家人同在，一起为曼德拉总统祈祷。我们欠他们数不清的感谢。

They have sacrificed much and endured much so that our people could be free.

他们牺牲了许多，忍受了许多，才换来人民的自由。

Our thoughts are with his wife Mrs Graca Machel, his former wife Ms Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, with his children, his grand-children, his great grand-children and the entire family.

曼德拉的妻子格拉萨·米歇尔（Grace Machel）、前任妻子温尼·曼德拉(Winnie Madikizela-Mandeal)以及子女，孙辈和曾孙辈和整个家庭，我们和你们同在。

Our thoughts are with his friends, comrades and colleagues who fought alongside Madiba over the course of a lifetime of struggle.

曼德拉的朋友、陪伴在毕生不断奋斗的曼德拉身边的同事，我们和你们同在。

Our thoughts are with the South African people who today mourn the loss of the one person who, more than any other, came to embody their sense of a common nationhood.

今日前来悼念曼德拉，践行国家观念的人民，我们和你们同在。

Our thoughts are with the millions of people across the world who embraced Madiba as their own, and who saw his cause as their cause.

视曼德拉为自己的同胞，将曼德拉的事业视为自己事业的世界人民，我们和你们同在。 This is the moment of our deepest sorrow.

这一刻，我们向曼德拉致以最深沉的哀伤。

Our nation has lost its greatest son.

我们的国家失去了它最伟大的儿子。

Yet, what made Nelson Mandela great was precisely what made him human. We saw in him what we seek in ourselves.

纳尔逊·曼德拉的伟大之处在于他作为一个人对其他人的关爱，我们在他的身上看见了自己。 And in him we saw so much of ourselves.

我们在他的身上看到了自己奋斗的方向。

Fellow South Africans,

亲爱的南非同胞们：

Nelson Mandela brought us together, and it is together that we will bid him farewell.

曼德拉让我们团结在了一起，我们要一起为他祈福送行。

Our beloved Madiba will be accorded a State Funeral.

我们将为至爱的曼德拉举行国葬。

I have ordered that all flags of the Republic of South Africa be lowered to half-mast from tomorrow, 6 December, and to remain at half-mast until after the funeral.

我已下命所有悬挂国旗的机构在6日起开始降半旗，直到葬礼结束。

As we gather to pay our last respects, let us conduct ourselves with the dignity and respect that Madiba personified.

我们聚在一起向曼德拉表示最后的敬意，让我们向这位崇高而又受人尊敬的人告别吧！ Let us be mindful of his wishes and the wishes of his family.

让我们谨记他和他家庭的心愿。

As we gather, wherever we are in the country and wherever we are in the world, let us recall the values for which Madiba fought.

让我们谨记曼德拉为之奋斗的价值观吧，无论身在南非何处，无论身在世界何地。

Let us reaffirm his vision of a society in which none is exploited, oppressed or dispossessed by another.

让我们继承他的遗志，建立一个没有剥削，没有压迫，没有掠夺的社会。

Let us commit ourselves to strive together – sparing neither strength nor courage – to build a united, non-racial, non-se-xist, democratic and prosperous South Africa.

让我们团结一心，增强力量和勇气，建立一个团结、没有种族歧视、性别歧视、民主繁荣的南非共和国。

Let us express, each in our own way, the deep gratitude we feel for a life spent in service of the people of this country and in the cause of humanity.

让我们向这位穷其一生服务国家人民和人类事业的人表示衷心的感谢。

This is indeed the moment of our deepest sorrow.

这一刻，我们向曼德拉表示最深沉的哀悼。

Yet it must also be the moment of our greatest determination.

这一刻，也是我们彰显坚定决心的时刻。

A determination to live as Madiba has lived, to strive as Madiba has strived and to not rest until we have realised his vision of a truly united South Africa, a peaceful and prosperous Africa, and a better world.

决心像曼德拉一样活着，为曼德拉奋斗的事业而奋斗，直至实现他的夙愿，建立一个真正统一的南非，一个繁荣和平的南非，一个更加美好的世界。

We will always love you Madiba! May your soul rest in peace.

我们永远爱您，曼德拉！愿您的灵魂得到安息。

God Bless Africa. Nkosi Sikelel’ iAfrika.

上帝保佑南非。上帝保佑非洲。

有名的英语演讲稿 [篇2]

President Faust, members of the Harvard Corporation and the Board of Overseers, members of the faculty, proud parents, and, above all, graduates.

The first thing I would like to say is “thank you”. Not only has Harvard given me an extraordinary honor, but the weeks of fear and nausea Ive experienced at the thought of giving this commencement address have made me lose weight. A win-win situation! Now all I have to do is take deep breaths, squint at the red banners and fool myself into believing I am at the worlds best-educated Harry Potter convention.

Delivering a commencement address is a great responsibility; or so I thought until I cast my mind back to my own graduation. The commencement speaker that day was the distinguished British philosopher Baroness Mary Warnock. Reflecting on her speech has helped me enormously in writing this one, because it turns out that I cant remember a single word she said. This liberating discovery enables me to proceed without any fear that I might inadvertently influence you to abandon promising careers in business, law or politics for the giddy delights of becoming a gay wizard.

You see? If all you remember in years to come is the gay wizard joke, Ive still come out ahead of Baroness Mary Warnock. Achievable goals: the first step towards personal improvement.

Actually, I have wracked my mind and heart for what I ought to say to you today. I have asked myself what I wish I had known at my own graduation, and what important lessons I have learned in the 21 years that has expired between that day and this.

I have come up with two answers. On this wonderful day when we are gathered together to celebrate your academic success, I have decided to talk to you about the benefits of failure. And as you stand on the threshold of what is sometimes called real life, I want to extol the crucial importance of imagination.

These might seem quixotic or paradoxical choices, but please bear with me.

Looking back at the 21-year-old that I was at graduation, is a slightly uncomfortable experience for the 42-year-old that she has become. Half my lifetime ago, I was striking an uneasy balance between the ambition I had for myself, and what those closest to me expected of me.

I was convinced that the only thing I wanted to do, ever, was to write novels. However, my parents, both of whom came from impoverished backgrounds and neither of whom had been to college, took the view that my overactive imagination was an amusing personal quirk that could never pay a mortgage, or secure a pension.

They had hoped that I would take a vocational degree; I wanted to study English Literature.

A compromise was reached that in retrospect satisfied nobody, and I went up to study Modern Languages. Hardly had my parents car rounded the corner at the end of the road than I ditched German and scuttled off down the Classics corridor.

I cannot remember telling my parents that I was studying Classics; they might well have found out for the first time on graduation day. Of all subjects on this planet, I think they would have been hard put to name one less useful than Greek mythology when it came to securing the keys to an executive bathroom.

I would like to make it clear, in parenthesis, that I do not blame my parents for their point of view. There is an expiry date on blaming your parents for steering you in the wrong direction; the moment you are old enough to take the wheel, responsibility lies with you. What is more, I cannot criticise my parents for hoping that I would never experience poverty. They had been poor themselves, and I have since been poor, and I quite agree with them that it is not an ennobling experience. Poverty entails fear, and stress, and sometimes depression; it means a thousand petty humiliations and hardships. Climbing out of poverty by your own efforts, that is indeed something on which to pride yourself, but poverty itself is romanticised only by fools.

What I feared most for myself at your age was not poverty, but failure.

At your age, in spite of a distinct lack of motivation at university, where I had spent far too long in the coffee bar writing stories, and far too little time at lectures, I had a knack for passing examinations, and that, for years, had been the measure of success in my life and that of my peers.

I am not dull enough to suppose that because you are young, gifted and well-educated, you have never known hardship or heartbreak. Talent and intelligence never yet inoculated anyone against the caprice of the Fates, and I do not for a moment suppose that everyone here has enjoyed an existence of unruffled privilege and contentment.

However, the fact that you are graduating from Harvard suggests that you are not very well-acquainted with failure. You might be driven by a fear of failure quite as much as a desire for success. Indeed, your conception of failure might not be too far from the average persons idea of success, so high have you already flown academically.

Ultimately, we all have to decide for ourselves what constitutes failure, but the world is quite eager to give you a set of criteria if you let it. So I think it fair to say that by any conventional measure, a mere seven years after my graduation day, I had failed on an epic scale. An exceptionally short-lived marriage had imploded, and I was jobless, a lone parent, and as poor as it is possible to be in modern Britain, without being homeless. The fears my parents had had for me, and that I had had for myself, had both come to pass, and by every usual standard, I was the biggest failure I knew.

Now, I am not going to stand here and tell you that failure is fun. That period of my life was a dark one, and I had no idea that there was going to be what the press has since represented as a kind of fairy tale resolution. I had no idea how far the tunnel extended, and for a long time, any light at the end of it was a hope rather than a reality.

So why do I talk about the benefits of failure? Simply because failure meant a stripping away of the inessential. I stopped pretending to myself that I was anything other than what I was, and began to direct all my energy into finishing the only work that mattered to me. Had I really succeeded at anything else, I might never have found the determination to succeed in the one arena I believed I truly belonged. I was set free, because my greatest fear had already been realised, and I was still alive, and I still had a daughter whom I adored, and I had an old typewriter and a big idea. And so rock bottom became the solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life.

You might never fail on the scale I did, but some failure in life is inevitable. It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all - in which case, you fail by default.

Failure gave me an inner security that I had never attained by passing examinations. Failure taught me things about myself that I could have learned no other way. I discovered that I had a strong will, and more discipline than I had suspected; I also found out that I had friends whose value was truly above rubies.

The knowledge that you have emerged wiser and stronger from setbacks means that you are, ever after, secure in your ability to survive. You will never truly know yourself, or the strength of your relationships, until both have been tested by adversity. Such knowledge is a true gift, for all that it is painfully won, and it has been worth more to me than any qualification I ever earned.

Given a time machine or a Time Turner, I would tell my 21-year-old self that personal happiness lies in knowing that life is not a check-list of acquisition or achievement. Your qualifications, your CV, are not your life, though you will meet many people of my age and older who confuse the two. Life is difficult, and complicated, and beyond anyones total control, and the humility to know that will enable you to survive its vicissitudes.

You might think that I chose my second theme, the importance of imagination, because of the part it played in rebuilding my life, but that is not wholly so. Though I will defend the value of bedtime stories to my last gasp, I have learned to value imagination in a much broader sense. Imagination is not only the uniquely human capacity to envision that which is not, and therefore the fount of all invention and innovation. In its arguably most transformative and revelatory capacity, it is the power that enables us to empathise with humans whose experiences we have never shared.

One of the greatest formative experiences of my life preceded Harry Potter, though it informed much of what I subsequently wrote in those books. This revelation came in the form of one of my earliest day jobs. Though I was sloping off to write stories during my lunch hours, I paid the rent in my early 20s by working in the research department at Amnesty Internationals headquarters in London.

There in my little office I read hastily scribbled letters smuggled out of totalitarian regimes by men and women who were risking imprisonment to inform the outside world of what was

happening to them. I saw photographs of those who had disappeared without trace, sent to Amnesty by their desperate families and friends. I read the testimony of torture victims and saw pictures of their injuries. I opened handwritten, eye-witness accounts of summary trials and executions, of kidnappings and rapes.

Many of my co-workers were ex-political prisoners, people who had been displaced from their homes, or fled into exile, because they had the temerity to think independently of their government. Visitors to our office included those who had come to give information, or to try and find out what had happened to those they had been forced to leave behind.

I shall never forget the African torture victim, a young man no older than I was at the time, who had become mentally ill after all he had endured in his homeland. He trembled uncontrollably as he spoke into a video camera about the brutality inflicted upon him. He was a foot taller than I was, and seemed as fragile as a child. I was given the job of escorting him to the Underground Station afterwards, and this man whose life had been shattered by cruelty took my hand with exquisite courtesy, and wished me future happiness.

And as long as I live I shall remember walking along an empty corridor and suddenly hearing, from behind a closed door, a scream of pain and horror such as I have never heard since. The door opened, and the researcher poked out her head and told me to run and make a hot drink for the young man sitting with her. She had just given him the news that in retaliation for his own outspokenness against his countrys regime, his mother had been seized and executed.

Every day of my working week in my early 20s I was reminded how incredibly fortunate I was, to live in a country with a democratically elected government, where legal representation and a public trial were the rights of everyone.

Every day, I saw more evidence about the evils humankind will inflict on their fellow humans, to gain or maintain power. I began to have nightmares, literal nightmares, about some of the things I saw, heard and read.

And yet I also learned more about human goodness at Amnesty International than I had ever known before.

Amnesty mobilises thousands of people who have never been tortured or imprisoned for their beliefs to act on behalf of those who have. The power of human empathy, leading to collective action, saves lives, and frees prisoners. Ordinary people, whose personal well-being and security are assured, join together in huge numbers to save people they do not know, and will never meet. My small participation in that process was one of the most humbling and inspiring experiences of my life.

Unlike any other creature on this planet, humans can learn and understand, without having experienced. They can think themselves into other peoples minds, imagine themselves into other peoples places.

Of course, this is a power, like my brand of fictional magic, that is morally neutral. One might use such an ability to manipulate, or control, just as much as to understand or sympathise.

And many prefer not to exercise their imaginations at all. They choose to remain comfortably within the bounds of their own experience, never troubling to wonder how it would feel to have been born other than they are. They can refuse to hear screams or to peer inside cages; they can close their minds and hearts to any suffering that does not touch them personally; they can refuse to know.

I might be tempted to envy people who can live that way, except that I do not think they have any fewer nightmares than I do. Choosing to live in narrow spaces can lead to a form of mental agoraphobia, and that brings its own terrors. I think the wilfully unimaginative see more monsters. They are often more afraid.

What is more, those who choose not to empathize may enable real monsters. For without ever committing an act of outright evil ourselves, we collude with it, through our own apathy.

One of the many things I learned at the end of that Classics corridor down which I ventured at the age of 18, in search of something I could not then define, was this, written by the Greek author Plutarch: What we achieve inwardly will change outer reality.

That is an astonishing statement and yet proven a thousand times every day of our lives. It expresses, in part, our inescapable connection with the outside world, the fact that we touch other peoples lives simply by existing.

But how much more are you, Harvard graduates of 2015, likely to touch other peoples lives? Your intelligence, your capacity for hard work, the education you have earned and received, give you unique status, and unique responsibilities. Even your nationality sets you apart. The great majority of you belong to the worlds only remaining superpower. The way you vote, the way you live, the way you protest, the pressure you bring to bear on your government, has an impact way beyond your borders. That is your privilege, and your burden.

If you choose to use your status and influence to raise your voice on behalf of those who have no voice; if you choose to identify not only with the powerful, but with the powerless; if you retain the ability to imagine yourself into the lives of those who do not have your advantages, then it will not only be your proud families who celebrate your existence, but thousands and millions of people whose reality you have helped transform for the better. We do not need magic to change the world, we carry all the power we need inside ourselves already: we have the power to imagine better.

I am nearly finished. I have one last hope for you, which is something that I already had at

21. The friends with whom I sat on graduation day have been my friends for life. They are my childrens godparents, the people to whom Ive been able to turn in times of trouble, friends who have been kind enough not to sue me when Ive used their names for Death

Eaters. At our graduation we were bound by enormous affection, by our shared experience of a time that could never come again, and, of course, by the knowledge that we held certain photographic evidence that would be exceptionally valuable if any of us ran for Prime Minister.

So today, I can wish you nothing better than similar friendships. And tomorrow, I hope that even if you remember not a single word of mine, you remember those of Seneca, another of those old Romans I met when I fled down the Classics corridor, in retreat from career ladders, in search of ancient wisdom:

As is a tale, so is life: not how long it is, but how good it is, is what matters.

I wish you all very good lives.

Thank you very much.

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